Node, c -04 The Engai
'The Engai' The Engai are from GURPS Aliens. They are a very old race. They are elfin in appearance, with pointy ears, big eyes and a child-like demeanor. The average age of these beings is somewhere north of 80,000 years. They live in a world of crystals spires and togas. Their every whim is catered to by insanely advanced Artificial intelligence. They live in genetically engineered bodies that do not age and can heal from incredible injuries. The Engai have the ability to back up their minds into some storage media, so any Engai who gets killed will be better in the time it take them to grow a new body. They don't remember much about their own history, or that of the commonwealth. This seems to be deliberate. They have NO psionics among them. The ability seems to have been genetically engineered out of them. The average Engai lives in a chronic "Now". History and the future and just boring distractions from having fun NOW. Their world is one large amusement park filled with games for the excessively dexterous, intelligent and bored. They were members of the commonwealth. They remember it fondly, if vaguely. It is frustrating to try and wedge knowledge out of them about it, since they are so utterly disinterested in history. Their AI's remember, but will only divulge such information if an Engai tells them to. They can easily duplicate any feat of Terhmelern bio-engineering, and consider most Terhmelern living tools to be "quaint". The Engai are universally fringeworthy and universal in their disinterest. over their average 80,000 year life span, they have visited more worlds that you can imagine and all the variety and insanity seems... the same. Boring. They know of the Mellor. The Engai AIs and the Engai themselves can see a Mellor instantly. They just can't be bothered to care that much. The destruction and misery wrought by the Mellor war has been the most interesting thing the Engai have seen in Eons. They seem to relate to it all as a giant piece of performance art, coming from a confusing, if different mind set. The Engai have a population of Pangolisks. They think Pangos are as cute as buttons and like having them around. But an Engai engaged in a propject can become very focused, and by the time they pay any attention to anything else a couple of centuries may have passed. So to them visitors and Pangos are an ephemeral experience. The Engai know of the Pango effects on Mellor - and can duplicate mellor freezing or mellor reformation effects in weapons of their own. IF anyone thinks to ASK THEM. It will not have occured to any Engai that the Mellor are dangerous to anyone else. it will not have occured to the Engai that the mellor have been altered or that this alteration might be necessary to undo. The Engai will use the portals on their own node. For reasons that remain obscure they REALLY prefer to avoid going to another node. It would take extremely powerful persuasion to convince an Engai to make this trip. Meta - in worlds with Magic, the Engai can incur some interesting... attention from supernatural beings - Gods of light and darkness all seem to want something from the Engai and will send agents to get it by force, persuasion, trickery or more force, depending on the inclination of the beaing and his minions. Just what this is, precisely is left vague for further development. '' On all other nodes, the Engai run the risk of remembering things and developing emotional reactions to these memories. An Engai might find himself forced by recovered memberies to become a crusader for good, or a force of evil and conquest, or any number of things that would interfere with living a life of hedonistic detachment. Almost certainly an Engai so afflicted will resent the PCs and blame the PCs for removing them from the Engai home node. Revenge may range from hostile glares and a snippy tone to a thousand deaths by torture. And you cannot tell if you're going to get Batman or Darth Vader by how the Engai acts at home. A visitor to the Engai will be warmly welcomed. Food, rest, clean up and resupply are easily obtained. Interested Engai and AI assistants will ask about the visitors, their lives and their experiences. The Engai will quickly and easily heal ANY injuries the PCs have. The Engai have other services available, but they charge exorbitant prices of wealth and deeds in order to discurage a mob of potential customers. If Fringe Pirates exist an come to Engai, their first raid will be a smashing success, netting artworks and artifacts of amazing value and beauty. the next raid will be a little tougher. A band of acrobatic, armed Engai will meet and fight Fringe pirates, using light, high mobility machines and weapons fired with insane accuracy. The truth is, fighting fringe pirates is viewed as a game. Engai killed by enemy fire will just be recovered from their back ups right after the battle. Heavier raids will provoke more happy, fast, acrobatic Engai. A real, all out raid in force will be exterminated out of hand by well armed Engai AI war machines. These monsters range in size from person-sized to battleship-sized, are all but impervious and have weapons that slice through anything and make it explode. in a light raid, a bored Engai will command the defensive reaction to stop so HE can play "Fight the Pirates". in serious, massive attack, the Engai are smart enough to pull back and let their real weapons take care of the problem. If the PCs really take the bit on their teeth and explore the Engai home world, they may find dark unused corners where the remains of previous invaders have been examined and then stored against the day when might need to be recycled. The Fringpath security system works against Engai energy weapons.(This is what it was designed for, really) An Engai on the fringe paths will use a rapier and a light pistol with armor piercing bullets. Perhaps a bow with arrows that have exploding or incindiary effects. The Engai are VERY fast and VERY dexterous, so they can get away with such tactics. 'Prime' 12:00 path to Alt 01:00 Engai Theater 02:00 Engai Bank 03:00 Blank 04:00 Engai Hospital 05:00 Engai mechanics shop 06:00 Big Gate, large road with Engai Mall, long disued and manned by infinitely patient AIs. You pay Commonwealth Credits here, or you get nothing. The Assayer's office is willing to dicker for rare elements. 07:00 Engai Coffee Shop 08:00 Engai Amusement park, Reception area for Orgy section. Use your imagination. 09:00 Blank 10:00 Engai Amusement park, Reception area for Casino. Don't bet what you can't afford to lose. 11:00 Engai Amusement park. Main Entrance. 'Alt' 12:00 path to System 01:00 Pokiworld Truckstop. This used to be a truck stop for travellers along the fringepaths. It was attacked and smashed to ruins. Three surviving quellor have spend the last 1000 years trying to clean up and set the thing to rights. They have the debris cleaned up, but no new supply has come in since the truckstop was attacked. Looks pretty forlorn in places. 02:00 Engai Homeworld in an Ice Age. Set up to be a Ski resort. Mega Fauna are present but have learned to leave brightly lit objects well alone. '''03:00 Path to C -03 Duckberg' 04:00 Engai Dinosaur World - their world had dinosaurs, but they were a different collection that Earth's. The Pre-Engai Dinosaurs have been left alone long enough to lose any fear of people. 05:00 Commonwealth Expo world. Site of a massive battle between Mellor lead Bio-Borg and Engai fighting machines with Commonwealth back up. it was a Phyrric victory for the Mellor, they severely damaged the Expo world and forced a retreat, but in so doing, set themselves up for decisive Engai counter strike. The Ruins are 10,000 years old, and pretty grim. The place is rife with a bio weapon that is deadly to Mellor and their Bio-Borg minions. Transit through the gate exterminates this bio-weapon with 100% efficiency. 06:00 Path to Prime 07:00 - The Engai Homeworld during it's Holocene Epoch. Another hunting reserve where things that look like saber toother wolf hounds hunt giant racoons and other weird mega fauna. On this world there are Paleo-Engai. They look like the love Child of an Engai and an ugly chimpanzee. They are sentient, but xenophobic and fearful. originally used as a hunting preserve, the Engai and other Commonwealth worlds left the Paleo Engai alone. 08:00 - the Ruins of a small Terhmelern Village. It was on al Alt of the Engai Homeworld, where no Engai had envolved. There are numerous Terhmelern built life forms interacting with the local ecology with varying success. The village was attacked and wiped out by Bio-Borg in the opening stages of the Mellor War. There were no survivors. 09:00 Path to C -05 Sharkworld 10:00 - Another Engai-less alt of the Engai homeworld, the immediate environs of the gate are an industrial facility, built by Engai high technology and then bombed to ruins. among the ruins are the ruins of "trucks" and spheres of metal in various stages of destruction and corrosion. Opposite of the former facility is a crater where an underground sort of highway interchange was bombed into collapse. Through that rubble are old Engai Mining machines. they eat rock and poop pefect spheres each of a specific element. Then "trucks" would gather the desired spheres and roll them back to the facility and along the fingepaths to the desired destination. The Fringepaths are 1,432.56 centimeters wide. The trucks are 687.62 Centimeters wide. (48% of the Fringepath width) or about 22.56 feet wide. The Spheres are about 667.5 centimeters wide or about 21 feet. The trucks would wrap around the spheres and roll the spheres in the desired direction. This was a back up system, as the big system would just grab spheres and place them wherever desired. The Mining machines, trucks and other equipment are in ruins, destroyed by an enemy assault. The Engai abandoned the world and it's mining during the war, since machines in their own solar system and dimension were easier to escort and defend. The world continues on, with life forms doing their thing. The quiet can be eerie, but usually birds sing and insects chirp and it sounds nice. beside spheres of silicon, aluminum, iron and other elements that are literally dirt common, there may be spheres of gold, silver, copper or other valuable metals and elements abandoned down in the mines. the mellor back enemy targeted people and machines. They did not care about the spheres, and left them alone. 11:00 Locked - if one could see Terhmelern listing for this world it would be called another nature preserve. However, what it shows is the Proto-engai in their own equvalent of 1963. They are smaller, slimmer than humans and look like the unfortunate mating of an elf and a Chimpanzee. But you can see where the Modern Engai are an idealized, fantastic version of these proto-Engai. The Mellor backed enemy and Engai war machine engagement about this world happend in space, about at the distance of Engai's moon from the world. Ancient accounts tell of a war in heaven between angels and demons. Once the Mellor backed enemy were hurled back from this world, access was cut off and the only contact between the larger universe and this world was by this one locked portal. The Portal opens into a cave. If bright enough lights are carried anyone with geology training will see that there are very odd formations in the cave walls. These will activate and tell invaders to leave. If the invaders do not leave a pitched battle ensues. The Engai machines set to guard access will not tolerate anyone but an Engai or a Terhmelern exiting the cave. The Engai have a pass that, when shown to the machines will set the holder as an "Allowed person" for the machines - but only only while he holds the pass. Category:Nodes Category:Crim's Game Category:Node C -04 'System' 12:00 - Path to Stellar 01:00 - Moon of a gas giant close to the System primary. Mining machines work happily in deadly conditions 02:00 - Small planeoid. A listening post and interceptor war machines stand by in case of attack. Person scale war machines invite trespassers to leave, immediately. 03:00 - Blank 04:00 - dome under the seas of a strange, hot ocean worldlet. 05:00 - Mining facility on Engai's moon, big machines move in a precise hurry. A curious truck may stop to ask visitors questions. 06:00 - path to Alt 07:00 - Another mining facility mines an asteroid over a cool, blue ice world. 08:00 - Another military listening post. A moon hides dreadnoughts and other warships, personal scale war machines will invite intruders to leave. 09:00 - Blank 10:00 - Cold rock ball. Mining machines and military machines fulfill their purpose - guard-bots again ask visitors to leave. 11:00 - gas extraction machinery and a listening post on an icy worldets far from the primary star. Category:Nodes Category:Crim's Game Category:Node C -04 'Stellar' 12:00 - Blank 01:00 - Beehive (GURPS Space Atlas; pg 62) the crystal towers are where the Engai harvest the crystals that make their own super powerful computers. 02:00 - Talisman (GURPS SPace Atlas Pg 58) A jungle world batyhed by stellar flares every so often. the life forms here are very hardy and resistant, can easily become biological disasters if carried to other worlds. 03:00 - Blank 04:00 - Hamish (GURPS Space Atlas Pg 36) a sort of earth like world, where extremely poison Sting Snails interfere with the Engai mining operation - thr world is exiting a icy phase, leading to environmental problems for the mining operation. 05:00 - Quentin (GURPS Space Atlas Pg 44) A desert world where Pressure Scorpions attack mining bots. 06:00 - Path to System 07:00 - Asmimar: Gurps Space Atlas 2, pg 16) A human agricultural colony, a subset of the mighty Xin Wu coporation 08:00 - Survivas (GURPS Space Atlas pg 56) Mix 1984 with a modern HMO. 09:00 - Blank 10:00 - Sheba (GURPS Space Atlas pg 50) A human monarchy on a rough world. 11:00 - Thishri - A world of lichen, plakton and moss - and some excellent mineral deposits. two Mega Corps have conflicting claims and have hired mercenaries to "guard their interests"; the portal here is not known of, yet. Human worlds - humans were trasplanted (Or trans-planeted, if you prefer) in ancient times by the common wealth. They wew cut off from supply by the Mellor war and went through a dark age. Think Traveller for the feel. Strike Humans - Proto Engai. The Human worlds that have portals think they are a sort of close Engai hyperspace route - that the Engai rarey use. Normol folks use starships to get from place to place. The true extent of the Fringepaths is not currently known to the Human worlds on this node. Category:Nodes Category:Crim's Game Category:Node C -04